Supreme Court of the United StatesDecided

Pennoyer v. Neff'
Argued

Full case name:	Sylvester Pennoyer v. Marcus Neff
Citations:	95 U.S. 714
Prior history:	Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Oregon
Subsequent history:

Holding No personal jurisdiction over defendants who are physically absent from the state or have not consented to the court's jurisdiction Court membership

Chief Justice Morrison Waite

Associate Justices Nathan Clifford, N. H. Swayne, S. F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, William Strong, J. P. Bradley, William Hunt

Case opinions

Majority by: Field

Joined by:

Concurrence in the judgment by:

Dissent by: Hunt

Joined by:

Laws applied U.S. Const. Amend. XIV Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1877), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that there is no personal jurisdiction over a defendant unless the defendant is physically present in the state, consents to the court's jurisdiction, or is one over whom the court has power.

Factual and procedural background

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Marcus Neff owed money to his attorney, John H. Mitchell, for unpaid legal bills. Mitchell sued Neff in the Oregon state court system; Neff was not to be found there, so Mitchell won the lawsuit by default. Neff later acquired property in Oregon, which the court ordered seized and sold in order to pay the judgment to Mitchell. Sylvester Pennoyer bought the land at auction, and Neff sued Pennoyer in federal court to recover his land. Neff won, and Pennoyer appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

Issue

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The Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a court could order property owned by an out-of-state resident to be seized and sold where the out-of-state resident was not served actual notice, and where that property was not in the possession of the out-of-state resident at the time of the lawsuit.

Result

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The Supreme Court found for Neff. In order for the trial court to have jurisdiction over the property, said property needed to be attached (seized) before the proceedings. Constructive notice is not enough to inform a person living in another state, except for cases affecting the personal status of the plaintiff (like divorce); or the case is in rem and the property sought is within the boundaries of the state. The result would have been different had Neff owned property in Oregon before he was sued there by Mitchell. The law assumes that property is always in the possession of the owner, and the owner therefore knows what happens to his property; therefore, attachment of the property makes constructive notice sufficient.

Concurrence

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Dissent

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Subsequent history

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This case is no longer valid law in the United States where in personam jurisdiction is concerned. See below.

Later developments in the doctrine

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The doctrines governing personal jurisdiction have spawned a great deal of discourse within the Supreme Court, with many cases fine-tuning the concept. Prominent among these are International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945) (holding that jurisdiction must be premised on minimum contacts, such that maintenance of the suit does not offend "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice"), and Burnham v. Superior Court, 495 U.S. 604 (1990) (holding that the intentional presence of an individual within a state was nevertheless sufficient contact to provide jurisdiction).

See also

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• List of United States Supreme Court Cases
• Sylvester Pennoyer
• Marcus Neff

Trivia

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• Pennoyer v. Neff is considered somewhat of a milestone amongst law students and is viewed as the first true introduction to how strikingly complex legal issues can be. At some law schools, it is the first case new students read in civil procedure class, and the professor may spend two or three weeks quizzing and challenging students on various aspects of the case, a traditional initiation into the Socratic method. The actual text of the case is notoriously obfuscative and verbose, even for a civil procedure case. This being the case, some law schools have done away with teaching the case all together.

Further reading

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• Borchers, Patrick J. The Death of the Constitutional Law of Personal Jurisdiction: From Pennoyer to Burnham and Back Again 24 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 19 (1990)
• Perdue, Wendy Collins Sin, Scandal, and Substantive Due Process: Personal Jurisdiction and Pennoyer Reconsidered, 62 Wash. Law Rev. 479 (1987)
• Tocklin, Adrian Pennoyer v. Neff: The Hidden Agenda of Stephen J. Field 28 Seton Hall Law Rev. 75 (1997)

External links

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• Full text of the decision & case resources from Justia & Northwestern-Oyez
• Tocklin, Adrian Pennoyer v. Neff: The Hidden Agenda of Stephen J. Field Seton Hall Law Review Volume 28 Book 1

United States civil procedure case law | United States federalism case law | United States Supreme Court cases